The history of American women [quiz]

American Women's History: A Very Short Introduction

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Over the past several decades, few fields of American history have grown as dramatically as women’s history. Today, courses in women’s history are standard in most colleges and universities, and historians regularly produce scholarship on women and gender. In 1981, historian Gerda Lerner provocatively challenged, “always ask what did the women do while the men were doing what the textbook tells us was important.”

In her book American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction, author Susan Ware responds to Lerner’s statement, discussing the achievements of women throughout American history. How familiar are you with the women who shaped America as we know it today? How much do you know about the history of American women?

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Image Credit: “Pocahontas saves the life of Capt. John Smith.” by United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

A pioneer in the field of women's history and a leading feminist biographer, Susan Ware is the author and editor of numerous books on twentieth-century U.S. history. She currently serves as general editor of the American National Biography, and was designated Senior Advisor to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Susan is the author of American Women's History: A Very Short Introduction.